


ML Secret Santa Fic 2016

by Hopeless_Hogwartian394



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Christmas, Cute, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, ML Secret Santa, Marichat, Mlsecretsanta 2k16, and make a guest appearance as the briefly mentioned akuma, but only if you like that sort of thing, i describe something as an 'electrocuted dandelion', look at these beans, pre-reveal, semi-romantic subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 01:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9050434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hopeless_Hogwartian394/pseuds/Hopeless_Hogwartian394
Summary: Marichat prereveal cutes. Friendship and fluff and slight non-platonic subtext, and I managed to describe something as an ‘electrocuted dandelion so that’s a win. Enjoy, and Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas to all





	

**Author's Note:**

> My mlsecretsanta gift for [hoppershedgie](http://hoppershedgie.tumblr.com) on tumblr

  
[](http://theyrejustbehindtheveil.tumblr.com/)Marinette hates the cold. Always has, for as long as she can remember. And Paris in the winter is not a particularly warm place. It’s cold. And wet. And sometimes it snows. It’s horrid. And Ladybug wears spandex. Even magic spandex doesn’t exactly keep out the cold very well.

Late one December night Marinette finds herself sheltering from the rain in a shop doorway. It’s after dark, and the only reason she is outside in this weather is thanks to a late afternoon akuma that took her and Chat until evening to track down and a fight that doesn’t finish until after dark. After the akumatised individual, a bookish brunette with a surprisingly vicious fighting style, is neutralised and the akuma purified, Marinette is forced to duck into an alleyway to keep her secret identity a secret. There is no time for her to get home as Ladybug.

And so here Marinette is, with an exhausted kwami, no umbrella, late at night and 20 minutes from her home. It’s a bit of a problem. The rain does not appear to be letting up at all, and so Marinette decides to brave the wet and get home before she is frozen half to death.

Bad idea.

While the rain is not particularly heavy, it is unrelenting, and soon Marinette has gone from being slightly wet around the edges to soaked. It’s difficult to see properly, and the noise of the rain drowns out many of the ambient sounds of the night, setting her on edge. After a good five minutes of trekking through the rain, she is startled by a skittering from the rooftops to her left. She whirls in the direction of the sound, which is followed by a figure landing with a thump next to her of her. Thoroughly startled, Marinette snaps her elbow out and up. It impacts into the figure next to her with a smack and a deeply familiar yelp. She stops.

“Chat Noir?“

The shape next to her lets out a pained grunt. “That’s one heck of an arm you’ve got there, Princess”

Marinette lets out a sigh of relief that she isn’t in danger. “Don’t startle me like that, Chat!”

“Sorry, Princess. I didn’t mean to.” He droops slightly at her scolding as Marinette pushes her dripping fringe out of her eyes before moving to face her straight on. “And what is such a pretty Princess such as yourself doing out this late at night.”

Marinette’s eyes widened slightly as she fumbled for an excuse. After a momentary mental blank, she went with an attempt at deflection. “I don’t see why that’s any of your business, Chat. A girl has as much right to be out late at night as anyone else,” she sputters out with a gentle push to Chat’s shoulder. He stumbles back slightly from the unexpected pressure, before leaning forward into her space.

She flips one of her dripping pigtails over her shoulder, catching Chat in the face with a spray of water. He yelps for the second time that night and jumps back with a wild shake of his head that sends a shower of water over Marinette. She shivers from the shock and all of a sudden Chat’s concerned expression is back. “Marinette! You need to get home!”

Marinette rolls her eyes at her partner’s overdramatic proclamations and then grins mischievously. “Well, if my gallant knight would care to escort me home, I have no doubt that my safe return is assured.” She sketches a mock-curtsey in Chat’s direction. He grins delightedly at her antics, and bows in response.

“I would be honoured to escort my Princess home to safety” he declares with an extravagant wave of his hand that dislodges a cascade of water from the ridges of his suit.

He carefully twines his arm around her waist, and she slides her arms around his neck. It is a familiar position for Ladybug and Chat Noir, but her being Marinette adds  to the danger, so she presses herself closer to Chat and forces herself to tighten her grip beyond what she is accustomed to as Ladybug. There is a momentary pause, before Chat leaps straight up and starts bounding in the general direction of her home.

It doesn’t take long for Chat to land with a disturbingly soft thump on her balcony. Marinette, hyper-aware of Tikki shivering in her purse, grabs Chat’s hand and makes a beeline for the trapdoor to her room, tugging him along behind her as she ducks through the hatch and they tumble down together onto her bed, Chat landing on top of her.

He lies frozen for a moment before scrambling off her, sputtering apologetically. She giggles at his obvious embarrassment, before clambering around him towards the ladder that leads to the floor. She turns so she is facing the tangle of damp cat on her bed. “Wait here,” she commands in her best Ladybug voice.

She manages to successfully navigate to the floor without slipping, despite the water still dripping from her hair and clothes making the descent more slick and precarious than usual. Once safely on the floor, she heads for the downstairs linen closet as quietly as she can, so as not to disturb her parents.

When she pops her head back through the entry hatch, she has a plate of food balanced atop a small stack of towels. She knows her partner, and he never passes up food, even day old bread and pastries. Every other time he visits, Chat will always pounce gleefully on any food she offers.

Chat has vacated her bed and instead is dripping awkwardly on her floor. He perks up when he sees the pile in her arms, and swoops to relieve her of the plate, retreating to place it on the desk.

By the time she clears the top of the stairs, he has already gotten stuck into the food on the plate. Tugging her hairbands out of her hair out one handed, she lobs a towel in his general direction. A light flump indicates contact, and she makes use of Chat’s distracted confusion to rescue herself a danish before taking herself and a change of clothes back up to the relative privacy of her bed. Tikki swirls out from her purse and curls up in a towel, shivering a little. Marinette hopes she won’t get sick again, but with Chat waiting, she can only pat Tikki dry and wrap her in a towel so only her eyes are visible and hope for the best. She tucks Tikki behind a small pile of books and begins to sort herself out.

When she comes back down, Chat is still helping himself to the plate of pastries, and has now developed a small puddle around his feet. A slight huff of exasperation escapes her lips as she marches over to where her ridiculous catboy is standing, still with the towel she threw at him draped over his head. She stops less than half a metre away from him.

"You’re wet.”

A confused noise escapes him.

“And you’re dripping on my floor.”

He glances down at his feet and a smirk spreads across his face. Marinette suppresses a fond groan, knowing exactly what that expression heralds. “Guess I’m just dripping with good looks.”

He yelps at her annoyed glare, fumbling for the towel on his head. “Sorry Marinette, I didn’t realise, I’m so sorry,” he mumbles. She giggles.

“It’s okay, minou. Let’s get you dried off, and then you can go back to eating all our food.” He lets out an indignant squawk, but doesn’t contest the point. She pushes him down onto a desk chair and starts rubbing his hair dry.

Ten minutes of Chat purring under her fingers as she dries his hair, and Marinette pulls the towel away from his head. She tries to restrain a giggle at the sight of his hair, which has been rendered even more disheveled than usual from being towelled dry, but can’t quite manage it. It sticks up in all directions and makes him look like an electrocuted dandelion. His head turns at the sound, but Marinette can’t help herself. “Marinette?”

Giggles bubble out of her at the sight of his confused expression underneath the ridiculous floof of his hair. His head tips sideways and she doubles over, openly laughing. She laughs for five straight minutes while Chat flutters nervously around her. It would be endearingly cute if she didn’t get overwhelmed by a new spasm of laughter every time she looked at his hair.

Her laughter finally dies away, leaving her breathless and content.

“Marinette?” Chat’s voice is nervous. “Are you okay?” She nods, not wanting to open her mouth in case her laughing fit starts up again. “What was all that about?” She waves her hand in the general direction of his head, to which he reaches his hand to his head and runs it through his hair.

A grin spreads across his face, and he ruffles his hair into a semblance of its former tousled state. “So, Princess, now that I am no longer dripping water everywhere, what next? Are you planning on tying my tail into knots?”

A fond eye roll is the only response Marinette can give to his ridiculousness. “How about a movie? It’s still raining, and you only just dried off”

Chat’s face lights up and he nods furiously.

“That sounds like a fantastic idea, Marinette.” Marinette feels delight bubble up and tug her smile into a grin as she fetches her laptop and tugs Chat up the ladder to her bed.

As always, it takes them at least twenty minutes of intense debate to settle on a movie that both of them are willing to watch, but Marinette doesn’t mind, and she gets the distinct impression that Chat doesn’t either. It’s the sort of thing that close friends do, and Chat always gets so absurdly happy whenever they do anything like what normal friends do.

Its adorable, some tiny part of her whispers as Chat sets up the movie.

Marinette settles down with one earbud in her ear and Chat curled up next to her with the other earbud in one of his own human ears.

When Marinette wakes, her room is dark and the rain has slowed to a light patter. There is a weight on her shoulder and something is tickling her cheek. Turning her head reveals that Chat has nodded off with his head on her shoulder and seems to be fast asleep. A fond smile tugs the corners of her mouth up.

Marinette prepares to slip out from under Chat’s head without waking him.

Unfortunately, breathing in causes Chat’s hair to tickle her nose, and a sneeze escapes her. She tenses. Chat stirs, but doesn’t wake. Marinette relaxes, and gently heaves Chat off the and down onto the mattress. He snuffles slightly, then curls into a ball, tangled in a blanket and hair once more sticking up every which-way.

Her laptop she relocates to its charger, and the towels she folds into a stack, ready to be taken downstairs in the morning. The rain has slowed and so she clambers back up the ladder and kneels next to Chat and attempts to wake him.

“Minou,” she coos, “wake up.” He grumbles and rolls away from her.

“Wakey-wakey, kitty.” She starts insistently poking his side until his mumbling turned into a complaining groan. “Cmon kitty, you gotta get home”

“Don’ wanna.”

“The rain’s practically stopped. You need to head home or you’ll be missed.”

“Noooooo.” He opens his eyes and levers up into an upright position with a groan.

“Yeeesss. Cmon it’s late.”

Chat grins sleepily at her, half open eyes glinting brightly in the near dark. “Very well, Princess. It seems this loyal cat must take his leave.” He reaches up and hoists himself out the hatch, before turning and extending a helpful but completely unnecessary arm back to her. She takes it anyway, and he hauls her up with ease onto her balcony, tugging her close and making sure she is firm on her feet before letting her go.

A gloved hand rests on her shoulder, and Chat wraps her in a firm hug, his long arms wrapping around her shoulder and his hair tickling her cheek. “Thank you Princess, for the shelter and the company.” There isn’t a trace of flirt or laughter in his voice, and Marinette leans into him, smiling into his shoulder.

“Anytime, minou.”

“Guess I’ll see you around, Princess.” With a smirk and a two fingered salute, Chat flicks out his baton and sproings away. She watches him disappear amongst the rooftops.

The rain is gentle on her face, and she grins. The air is cold, and she can’t stay out in it, but, as she stands there, the rain turns to snow, flakes falling onto the street and tickling her face. Marinette grins and spreads her arms wide, delighting in the pricks of cold on her arms and upturned face.


End file.
